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Course Rollover/Reset Overview

What is it?

Your library will need to decide how to handle the process of reusing or rolling over reading lists from one term to the next. Leganto supports several options, and this toolkit is designed to provide you with an overview of rollover options to help you understand which option will work best for your library.

This overview is designed to help your library:

  • Better understand the options for rolling over or resetting Leganto reading lists.

  • Understand which rollover option will work best for you. 

Background

Rollover creates a copy of an existing reading list and associates it with a new course. As part of this process, data associated with the reading list and the citations (such as copyright records, tags, statuses, notes, and discussion threads), can be copied or reset, as configured by the library, to properly prepare the new list for the upcoming term. 

The library can rollover reading lists in bulk using the course loader, or instructors can roll over their own lists one by one at the point of need.

As an alternative to rollover, reading list can be reset, not rolled over, to prepare for the upcoming term. This will not create a duplicate copy of the list, but will simply reset specific information, such as student discussion or instructor usage reports, so the list can be reused in subsequent terms.

Rollover Options

The following questions may help you determine which option is best for you. 

  • Do you use the course loader?

  • Do you have information to map course codes from one term to another?

  • Will instructors be willing to roll over their own reading lists?

  • Will instructors want to start working before the library is ready to roll over lists?

  • Do you need to preserve historical information about what was on a reading list during a specific term?

Bulk Rollover

The library can rollover reading lists in bulk using the course loader. The course loader can both create new courses and roll existing reading lists into those courses. As lists are rolled over, some information in the lists can be copied, updated or reset, depending on the library's requirements. The rollover settings for each field is defined on the Course Loader Integration Profile. See Configuring Course Loading for more details.

Bulk Rollover is generally the recommended method for performing course rollover, assuming your library has the technical support to do this. 

Advantages:

Instructors do not need to roll over the reading list. When accessing Leganto via LTI, instructors will simply be taken to the rolled over version of their reading list and can make changes to it as needed.

The library can configure how data from previous reading lists (such as copyright records, tags, statuses, notes, and discussion threads) will map to new reading lists. The library can also set the publication status and list status for both the old and new reading lists.  

Information about all previous versions of reading lists, including all citations, tags, and notes, is preserved in Alma and Analytics. 

Disadvantages:

Requires the use of the course loader integration profile, which some institutions do not use.

The library must have sufficient data to map the old course codes to the new course codes.

The library must consider the timing of rollover; when should the reading lists be rolled over so as to be available to faculty before they prepare for the term?

Instructor Rollover

Instructors can roll over their own reading lists, one by one. Additionally, library staff can roll over reading lists one by one. As lists are rolled over, some information in the lists can be copied, updated or reset, depending on the library's preferences, which are defined in the Instructor Rollover Operations mapping table. The library can also enable instructors to decide whether to copy or reset some fields. See Enabling Instructor Rollover for more information.

In the new UI, lists are rolled over using the "Duplicate list" option.

Advantages:

Instructors can roll over their lists at the point of need. Instructors who plan early for the upcoming term or who have a course that starts at an unusual time of year are not dependent on the library to begin their work.

The library can configure how data from previous lists will map to new reading lists. The library can also determine if instructors should have flexibility to define whether aspects of the reading list should be copied or reset (public notes, student discussions, etc.)

The library does not need to be able to map course information from term to term.

The library does not need to use the course loader.

Disadvantages:

Requires additional steps for instructors.

The library can perform bulk rollover but also enable instructor rollover, which may be helpful if most courses can be rolled over in bulk but there are some courses which cannot be mapped, or some instructors who need to rollover a course before the bulk rollover occurs.

Resetting Reading Lists

As an alternative to rollover, lists can be reset, not rolled over, to prepare for the upcoming term. In this case, the exact same reading list is used, rather than a copy of the reading list. Information such as student discussion or instructor usage reports can be reset to create a clean reading list for the upcoming term. See Reading List Bulk Update for more information.

Advantages:

Resetting lists is the simplest process, especially if course codes are kept consistent from one year to another.

Doesn't require any additional work for instructors.

There is a smaller set of lists to be managed in Alma because there is only one copy of a list, as opposed to one copy per term.

Disadvantages:

If citations are added to or removed from a reading list from one term to the next, the history of what was previously on the list is lost. Some institutions are required to retain a version of a reading list as it stood at the end of each year. This is not possible with the reset option.

May require that the library manually add, remove, or change course codes from one year to the next. Some libraries configure the LTI to match on only part of the course code, not including the year and term information, so lists will continue to link to the appropriate course year over year.

Students cannot access reading lists from previous courses; previous versions of the reading list may have contained different resources.

Can’t reset as many fields as with the rollover options, including copyright information, list and citation status, and publication status.

Further information 

For more information please refer to the following articles:

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